


Beautiful Disaster

by shortystylee



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arya is kind of extra, Bonding through trivia, EVERYTHING GOES WRONG, F/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Relationship, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 22:52:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13890825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortystylee/pseuds/shortystylee
Summary: After a horrible day, Arya gets back to her car to find someone going through her things. In normal Arya fashion, she acts before she thinks, and things get out of control.





	1. Chapter 1

Everything had been fine when she woke up that morning. Her bed was warm, she felt adequately rested when her alarm went off, and it was the last day of work before a long weekend. She had no idea that her perfect day would end just as soon as it began. 

The drive-thru line at her normal stop for coffee was around the block, so she went elsewhere - someplace that didn’t listen to her request for almond milk instead of regular, landing herself in the bathroom for the first twenty minutes of work. It was plenty of time to write online reviews on Yelp, Google, and Facebook about the importance of order accuracy and milk substitutes. She missed the eight-thirty staff meeting because of that, prompting her stick-up-his-ass manager to yell at her in front of her interns.  _ As if those kids needed any more incentive not to listen to me _ . At eleven, she got a text from her sister cancelling their dinner plans, which normally she wouldn’t have minded, but Sansa was a great cook and Arya got along with her girlfriend Margaery quite well. It also meant there was no food in her fridge for dinner later, she’d have to stop at Fossoways on her way home. When lunchtime arrived, she realized her lunch was still on her kitchen table, and she tried her best to piece together a lunch from the cafeteria that wasn’t full of grease. There was a jack-knifed semi on the other side of the freeway on her way home, and all of the rubberneckers on her side were causing a back up there as well. She got to the gym though, a half hour later than she hoped, but it was squat day.  _ And squat day always helps me let off some steam _ , she told herself as she changed into tiny shorts and a tank top.  _ Besides, what else can go wrong today? _

A lot more, she learned. On the floor of the strength room, the entirety of the Winterfell community boys swim and dive team were using every single squat rack. Six squat racks, twenty-four puberty stricken boys not putting plates away or squatting below parallel. Arya turned on her heels, grabbed her gym bag, and headed to her car without bothering to change back into her street clothes.

At Fossoways, she parked at the back of the lot, quickly grabbed a tray of frozen Mac and cheese and a box of thick cut garlic toast from the freezer aisle, two bags of Reese’s peanut butter cups, and a sampler six pack from Winterfell Brewing Company. She waited for what seemed like an eternity in the “less than 12” items check out lane, behind who had to be the oldest woman in existence, who had as many items as she was years old, and who paid with a personal check.

XxXxX

Anyone one of these misfortunes was liable to the the one that pushes her over the edge, makes her scream at the top of her lungs in the middle of the cereal aisle or verbally abuse the kid bagging groceries. It’s not until she walks back to where she parked and sees some guy in the trunk of her car that she loses it. 

“Alright, fucker, your choice: you want the mace, or you want a good old-fashioned ass kicking?"  
  
He turns to face her, standing up to his full height. He’d been ducking under the raised hatch of her Subaru Impreza, _her baby_ , rifling around through the trunk when she walked up, and Arya hadn’t noticed how tall and broad chested he was... instead she’d just reacted to the man going through her car in the Fossoways parking lot.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
He looks at her, confused, then turns back to the trunk. _Well, shit. I think this one’s a bit too big to fight. Just what I fucking needed to cap off an already ruined day._   
  


“The mace it is, then.”   
  
The spray hits him and he’s on the ground immediately - dropping to his knees, pawing violently at his face, dry heaving, threatening to leave the contents of his stomach on the ground.    
  
It feels like there’s fire coursing through her veins, adrenaline surging and heart pounding. She steps back and surveys the scene in front of her, and it feels like her heart flatlines. The noise her now empty canister of mace makes as it drops and hits the ground doesn’t even register with her.   
  
Her world is suddenly in slow motion as she begins to pick up on the little details that were missed in her panic. She notices that the car next to this one is identical to it, all the way down to the paint color, trim level badge, and empty Thule bike rack on the roof. Arya takes a longer glance at the one next to the giant guy she just assaulted - it has the trunk hatch down and she sees the license plate: NYM3R14.   
  
_ Fuck me _ .    
  
He’s on his knees on the asphalt, half his groceries in the hatch of his car, half in the cart still, and he’s still rubbing desperately at his eyes, tears streaming down his face.    
  
Against all her better judgement, she clicks her keyfob, unlocks her car and walks behind him to the passenger side. She opens the door as wide as possible, then fiddles with the lever to push the seat as far back as it goes. With a sigh, she bends down and grabs him under his armpits, helping him up and pulling him towards the passenger seat. He makes noises of protest, choking out words to ask what she’s doing.    
  
“Taking you to my apartment to clean you up.”  _ Making this right _ , she thinks. “So hopefully you won’t press charges,” she adds, sarcastically, trying to lighten the mood, though the idea of him going to the police is definitely lingering in the back of her mind. Once his legs are inside, she pulls the seatbelt across him, clicking it in place. 

  
It’s a warm summer night, probably one of the warmest Winterfell will see all year, and feeling mountains of guilt, she hurriedly grabs all his groceries and shoves them in her hatch with hers. He’s probably having the worst day of his life, all on account of her, so she figures she might as well take his food back to her place so nothing melts or goes bad. It crosses her mind at the last minute, and she locks his driver door from the inside, satisfied to hear it latch. 

Getting into her car feels normal for all of half a millisecond, until she goes to turn the radio on and sees him pulling up the collar of his t-shirt in attempt to wipe at his face.  _ What’s the protocol for this? Can we listen to the radio? Softly? Do I just drive home as quick as possible? It’s not like we‘re really gonna have a chat about how my already shitty day has gotten even worse.  _

As she pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main road, she realizes she’s just leveled up from assault to assault  _ plus _ kidnapping. 

_ Fucking stellar _ . She flips the radio on, since why the hell not, and as she goes through the stations, it seems to be doing it’s damnedest to taunt her. 

Her normal station? Criminal, Fiona Apple. 

Classic rock station? Renegade, Styx. 

80s station? Smooth Criminal, Michael Jackson. 

She slaps the radio button to turn it off, with enough force that even whats-his-face next to her looks over to give her a reprimanding stare through wet eyelashes and bloodshot eyes. 

In a turn of good luck, there’s a street parking spot open outside her building, so at least she won’t have to help this giant sobbing red-eyed man walk a few blocks down the road, a prospect she wasn’t looking forward to. Her neighbors are nosy enough as it is, and Winterfell is still a small, well-connected town - she won’t be surprised if somehow her whole family has found out about these shenanigans by Sunday’s family dinner.    
  
He leans against the wall as she gets her door unlocked, then she ushers him over and pushes him, as gently as possible, to sit down on an Ikea kitchen chair. 

“Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back,” she instructs him, while she runs five arm loads of groceries up three flights of stairs and gets the frozen and chilled items put away quickly, filling her tiny fridge to the gills. His groceries are the opposite of hers, not sad food at all. He’s got everything he needs for spaghetti night: crushed tomatoes, an onion, a garlic bulb, fresh herbs - not the dried in a jar kind she has in her cupboards. There’s even a chilled pouch of fresh pasta noodles, a bottle of wine she knows is out of her price range, and a pint of fancy gelato, chocolate espresso flavor. It’s then that she realizes what this particular array of foods probably means, and she adds another item to her growing list of wrongdoings.    
  
Assault?  _ Check _ .    
Kidnapping?  _ Check _ .   
Causing him to stand up his date for the evening?  _ Check, but at least that one isn’t a prosecutable offense _ .

She Googles how to treat being sprayed by pepper spray, and after deciding that she’s _not_ going to use the advice from some website which says to bathe him in milk, Arya gathers up towels and preps her largest Tupperware with a mixture of warm water and Dawn dish soap, drags him into the bathroom, and gets to work.


	2. Part Two

He knows instantly that he is not at his condo, before he even opens his eyes. For one thing,  _ his _ couch is large enough for him to lay all the way out on, not folded up like a contortionist.

 

He opens his eyes and looks around the unfamiliar room, taking note of his surroundings. Flat screen television on the wall, floating shelves below it with an Apple TV and a soundbar, cords not hidden but not in disarray either. Oversized framed photo of a snow capped mountain range. Matching side chair, coffee table, record player playing… Joni Mitchell? He listens to try to pick up on the words - definitely Joni Mitchell. His head is spinning but he pushes himself into a seated position on the mystery couch, then notices a framed photograph on the end table. He doesn’t recognize any of the people in it, until he gets midway through the line up, and sees her - the short ball of rage who ambushed him earlier while he was loading up his dinner into his trunk. 

 

_ Fossoways parking lot. Thinking it was neat to park next to another WRX. Pepper spray. _   
  


In a daze, he’d watched her put  _ his  _ groceries away in  _ her  _ cupboards, as he sat at her kitchen table. It seemed like he was just getting dragged around everywhere by her - into her car, up the stairs into her apartment, and then out of the kitchen and into her bathroom. Not that he had been in any state of mind to protest. Crying uncontrollably, rubbing at his eyes… Every single part of his face - the insides of his mouth and nose and throat - felt as if they were on fire and he could barely handle the bright light from the late afternoon sun. Up until then, he had thought the most painful thing in the world was breaking your leg and having to hobble seven blocks home - now he knows he was wrong. 

 

He recalls how she sat him down on the toilet lid, filled up a large tupperware container with a mixture of dish soap and warm water, and went through a stack of hand towels as she painstakingly washed his face, neck, and hands. Once his face was cleaned up a bit, Gendry had started to protest, saying that he could take over from there, but she’d been forceful - shushing him when he’d start sentences, grabbing towels from his hands. She’d slotted herself between his legs and reached down for the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head and tossing it into an open hamper behind her. With how methodical and professional she was in cleaning him up, he wondered if she worked as a nurse, or maybe in some sort of emergency services.

 

For a brief moment while he’s remembering all that happened, he remembers making a mental note that she’s  _ gorgeous _ , distinctly noting the way her teeth worry her bottom lip when she’s deep in concentration. Her shorts were downright minuscule, maybe only an inch or so longer than those he remembers the volleyball girls wearing in high school. They were giving him an all-access pass to ogle her pale thighs, and he could see her quads flex when she went up on her tippy-toes to reach for something in the medicine cabinet… and then she turned to the side and her ass was right there, round and firm and so utterly perfect he started to forget that she pepper sprayed him only twenty minutes earlier… until she bent down again to start toweling him off. Once she was satisfied that he was dry, she rummaged through the bottom drawer on the vanity, finally handing him a toothbrush still in the packaging, one of those you get in the goody bags from the dentist. She told him she’d put a big glass of water on the coffee table for him, along with the biggest t-shirt she could find, and left him there to brush his teeth.

 

Part of him wants to be angry, thinks he  _ should  _ be angry -  _ who the fuck does something like that? _ This entire turn of events could’ve been avoided if she’d simply asked him what he was doing in her car, and given him the chance to point out that the car he was loading up was, in fact, his own coincidentally matching car. He understands that he’s a big guy, and although to ask questions would’ve been his first response, had he been in that situation, it’s totally different for a woman to find giant man rummaging in her car at the back of a parking lot. 

 

He knows he can’t stay on this pint-sized couch forever. At some point, he’ll have to go and make painfully awkward conversation with his assailant-slash-saviour. It’d been such a good day too - the lady at his usual coffee stop gave him a large latte instead of a medium, one of his coworker’s accounts brought in a catered nacho bar lunch for the office, it was payday Friday, and his boss had informed him that he’d be receiving a large commission bonus for his help on acquiring the Hellerman account. 

 

“Hello?” he tries to say, but his voice comes out dry and strangled. The music is loud enough that he knows she can’t hear him. There’s a little bit of water left in the glass on the coffee table and he quickly downs the remaining mouthful. It helps, somewhat. He hears movement in a different room and then all of a sudden he picks up on the wonderful smells filling the apartment. Like tomatoes and oregano, basil… and then… garlic?  _ No, garlic bread _ , he realizes. 

 

He pushes up from the couch and walks towards the smells and commotion to find her in the kitchen, facing the stove, her back towards him. She’s changed her clothes, now wearing calf-length gray joggers, an oversized white t-shirt, sleeves rolled up and the back tied in a knot. The back is open wide, showing off a colorful strappy sports bra; she’d look like she’s on her way to the gym if it weren’t for the fuzzy slippers on her feet. 

 

“Um, hello…?” he says again, a bit louder this time. 

 

“Jesus Christ!” she yells, startled, and jumps to the side of the stove, hands up in the air. He’s just about ready to apologize for scaring her, except then her right hand lands on the rim of the saucepan. She pulls it away, cradling it with her other hand, as she hisses through gritted teeth. “Ow, ow, motherfuckingshitfuck…”

 

Gendry crosses the two steps over to her, taking her hand around the wrist and pulling her towards the sink. He flips the cold tap as far as it will go, and thrusts her hand under the cold stream of water. “Keep it under there, I’ll be right back,” he tells her, she looks up and nods, just slightly. 

 

He heads to her bathroom, and, privacy be damned, starts to open cabinets and drawers, rummaging through to find her medicine or first aid kit or whatever she happens to have.  _ Guess we’ll have to have our introductions later _ . She has what he’s looking for - Tylenol, gauze, tape - and he makes his way back to the kitchen, where she’s thankfully still running her hand under the water. 

 

“Scissors and a clean dry towel?”

 

“Knife block on the counter and drawer next to the fridge.”

 

He grabs both items from where she’s said and comes back to her, then turns water off and starts to grab her hand. “I’ve burnt myself before,” she says, pulling away, “I can take care of —”

 

“Quiet. Just let me help you.” She sighs, but allows it, holding her hand out to him. He can see exactly where she burnt it, the meaty part of her palm now an angry puffy red. She watches intently, as he dries her hand off as gently as possible and wraps the gauze around it, pausing to cut off a strip of tape. He tapes it in place and she hisses, he must’ve pressed down harder with the tape than he thought. “... sorry,” Gendry mumbles out. “All set on that end. You should take a Tylenol though.” He nods towards the bottle on the counter. 

 

She picks it up with her left hand and tries miserably to open the child lock cap. “Can you…?” He smiles as he nods at her, handing her a pill and passing her the Nalgene water bottle he’d noticed on the counter earlier. “Thank you.”

 

“I think this makes us about even now,” he says. He thinks about putting the cap back on the bottle, then realizes if she needs any later she’ll be hard pressed to open it, so it sets it on the counter with the cap next to it. “You clean me up, I clean you up.” Pausing, he cranes his head to look over at the stove behind her. “Besides, I might be getting an okay deal. Looks like you’ve even used my groceries to make us dinner.” 

 

“Alright, wait. I pepper sprayed you for, as it turned out, no real reason, and you helped me when I burned  _ my own hand _ . Cleaning you up and making dinner is my way of apologizing, I guess, for ya know… the assault and the subsequent kidnapping.”

 

“You still made me dinner using  _ my  _ groceries?

 

“If we’d used mine then we’d be having frozen mac and cheese.”

 

“Good call…” Her eyes light up and she realizes he’s wracking his brain to try to remember if he got her name at some point in the garbage fire of an evening.

 

“Arya… Stark,” she adds. 

 

“Gendry Waters.” He holds his right hand out then laughs, mumbling  _ oh, shit, forgot already _ , when she holds up her recently bandaged right hand. She offers him her left, and he takes it. It’s smaller than his, but her fingers are long and they wrap around his hand firmly, enough so that he can feel callouses here and there. An errant thought runs past his brain, about how wouldn’t this little chain of events be a hilarious story a few years down the road? Maybe at a dinner party, everyone chatting, telling stories of how they met their significant others.  _ We’d certainly take the award for most amount of bodily harm in the first twenty-four hours _ , he thinks, and then…  _ what the hell? Stop that. _ Gendry knows his mind likes to take ideas and run with them, which is amazing for his job, but if he doesn’t put the brakes on this quick, he’ll have them buying an RV and retiring in south Florida before the night is up.

 

Her hand is warm in his, and he lets go before hanging on makes the situation even more weird than it already is. “So like I said,” Arya begins, motioning towards the stove with her good hand, “I tried to make this dinner as a bit of an apology, but can you help get the bread out of the oven and plate up food?” She turns towards the cupboards, goes up on her tiptoes and starts to take out plates and glasses with her good hand, one at a time. “With my luck we’ll be cleaning tomato sauce off the linoleum,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at him.

 

“Or you’ll burn your left hand and I’ll be bandaging that one up too.”

 

They work in tandem, easily side-stepping around the other person, as Arya gets the plates, glasses, and silverware out and set up on the coffee table, and Gendry gets all the food dished up. She tells him to take them out into the living room and joins him a few seconds later, carrying a shaker of parmesan cheese in her good hand.    

 

They eat in silence for a while, both hungry from their ordeals, and not to mention it’s much later than either would usually eat. 

 

“You did a really good job on dinner,” Gendry finally says, breaking the silence. 

 

“Yea?” Arya replies, looking up from the plate on her lap. “That’s a surprise. I’m not the cook in my family. Usually my sister gets the praise.”

 

“I bet you’d give her a run for her money.”

 

Arya laughs at that, and tells him she’ll make sure to challenge her sister to a cook off and tell her all about this dumpster fire of a night next time she sees her. “She’s very… polite… by the books, I guess. But I’ve always had a feeling that she’s got a good Schadenfreude streak. Loves hearing about things going awry.”

 

Gendry turns towards her, a serious look on his face. “...Wait, is this  _ not  _ how you pictured your night going?” She snorts out a laugh, causing a smile to break through his serious-yet-sarcastic facade before he continues. “Don’t worry. My life definitely doesn’t go according to plan. Ever.” 

 

“I know how that feels,” Arya replies. She’s quiet for a moment before she smiles. “Sorry about ruining your date night, by the way.”

“Date night?”

 

“Yea, or just dinner with your girlfriend, wife… boyfriend. I dunno.” She shrugs and motions to the food in both their plates. “Whoever was going to be sharing this dinner with you instead of me.”

“Oh, no one. This was all for me. Treat yourself, isn’t that what they say?” He pauses, swirls more spaghetti around his fork and takes another bite. “Sorry for messing up  _ your  _ big date plans or whatever.”

“Hah, now that’s funny. I’m such a fucking mess that I pepper spray guys putting groceries into their own cars. Who the shit would date me?”

 

He shrugs, setting his plate down on the table. “I probably would.” Part of him has been thinking about it since his confusion and anger died down, and his reply leaves his mouth before he can stop it. 

 

“What? Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t know anything about me.” 

 

“I’ve managed to figure out a bit.” He leans back against the back of the couch and turns towards her. 

 

“Like what?” There’s a meatball on the end of her fork and she’s pointing it at him accusingly.

“You’re impulsive, and a little fearless, but you give a shit, or else I’d still be writhing in the parking lot waiting for the cart return boy to find me. You’ve got a pretty good voice and you’re into folksy singer songwriter women. Oh, and you're a Direwolves fan.” Gendry decides to stop there, quit while he’s ahead, instead of saying everything he wants.  _ You’re fucking hot, and have an amazing ass. This is the most interesting day I’ve had in years and I’m quickly starting to not care about the pepper spray. _

 

“I had some Joni on earlier, so I’ll give you that one as a freebie… but how’d you figure out about the Direwolves?”

 

“I’m psychic,” he replies, tapping the side of his head. 

 

Her head falls to the side and she raises both eyebrows. “Bullshit.”

 

“Fine. You’ve got a magnet on your fridge of their season schedule,” he explains. “Still, I’m not wrong about any of it, am I?”

 

XxXxX

 

He’s one-hundred percent dead-on and Arya is starting to get a bit wary of where exactly this conversation is headed.  _ The whole evening’s been one giant comedy of errors _ , she thinks,  _ and now we’re starting to wander down the ‘let’s talk about dating’ path. _

 

She’s needs a distraction. A diversion. She needs...

 

“Oh shit, I forgot!” she says suddenly. “I recorded Jeopardy while I was cleaning you up. I watch it every day, and today is no exception.”  _ Good job. Make an excuse to stop talking about how he might date you. Just because he’s incredibly good looking when he’s not crying on the ground doesn’t mean I should think too much into this. Definitely not gonna catch any feelings _ .

 

She turns the TV on and finds the episode in her DVR queue. Gendry makes no complaints about her choice of program, and thankfully no comments about her thinly veiled diversion. They continue to eat dinner, yelling out answers between bites and heckling contestants when they answer incorrectly on what they feel should be easy questions. He doesn’t seem a bit surprised when she gets every question right in a category about the Olympics, and they both do well on a Monty Python category, but he’s astounded by her knowledge of the US House of Representatives. “My dad is a sitting house rep,” she explains, without him having to voice the question - the look on his face was a dead giveaway. “We used to get dragged to all sorts of dinners and made to play nice with other politicians’ kids.”

 

What’s more mind boggling, in her opinion, is that Gendry gets every question right in a category about The Tony Awards. 

 

“I'm gonna need an explanation.” She grabs the remote and pauses the show - she wants an answer, but not enough to miss any of the questions.

 

“I was a bit of a theater nerd in high school. Not acting, but I always took woodshop and electrical and was pretty handy at set construction, rigging up lights, that sort of thing.”   

 

“Not one for being in the limelight?”

 

“Only limelight I'm interested in involves Geddy Lee.” 

 

“You’re into Monty Python and Rush? I'm glad I maced you and not some other weirdo.”  _ Come on, Trebek, I thought you had my back. I'm supposed to learn some deal breakers. Ya know, like he loves Nickelback, and that Indiana Jones sequel with Shia Lebeouf. I’m not supposed to learn that we have the same taste in comedy and Canadian prog rock.  _

 

Alex fails her during Double Jeopardy too. Gendry nails a category on 1950s sci-fi movies and does better than she'd expected on world capitals, a category she thinks of as hers. 

 

Final Jeopardy is about the Westminster Dog Show - the question asks for the most winningest breed. They both answer in sync - wire fox terrier - nonchalantly, as if why wouldn’t someone know that answer? 

 

The stare at each other for a moment, and Arya begins her explanation first. “One of my mom’s big hobbies was showing dogs. Malamutes though, and she only had ours compete locally, but we still always watched the pro shows with her.”

 

“We had a wire fox terrier,” he starts, but pauses abruptly. “Sorry, rather, one of the foster families I lived with had one. It was a purebred, but had an overbite so they couldn’t show it. Tell ya what though, I swear they loved that goddamn dog more than any of us. Used to say they could’ve made a lot more money showing him than they got from the government for fostering.” 

 

Arya is not usually left without words. It’s not what she expected to hear, not at all. Maybe a story about working at a pet store, a friend who had one, something. 

 

“Sorry to be kind of a downer.”

 

“You’re not.” Her hand reaches out immediately and lands on his forearm, gently squeezing. His eyes flick up to meet hers, and they lock on. A beat passes, and Gendry smiles at her, just a slightly lopsided smile that she thinks is thanking her for understanding and not prying. 

 

“I should get going,” he says. “It’s late and we’ve both had quite the night already.”

 

“Um, yea, okay.” Truthfully, she’d almost forgotten that eventually he’d need to go home.  _ He’s not your friend, _ she chides herself.  _ He’s just a guy you attacked, kidnapped, and then cleaned up and made dinner for… who happens to be close to your age, funny, attractive, and seems like maybe he’s interested in you too _ . “Just let me get these dishes in the kitchen and I’ll grab my keys.”

 

She takes him back to the Fossoways parking lot, mostly in silence, save for whatever songs the local classic rock stations plays at 10pm on a Friday. When she had no idea what to do once she realized he wasn’t stealing her car, she acted on impulse - dragging him home with her seem perfectly sensible. Now, Arya finds herself wondering how you ask for someone’s phone number when this is the situation you’re in. 

 

_ Hey, I just maced you _

_ So you think I’m crazy _

_ But I made you dinner _

_ So call me, maybe? _

 

She pulls into the parking lot, making her way to the very back, and hears him sigh when his car comes into view.

 

“Well, I’m glad to see it’s still there.”

 

“I locked it for you.”

 

“I guess I’ll see you around town then, eh?”

 

Arya nods and breathes out a  _ yea, I guess _ . He gets out and she starts fiddling with her phone for a moment. She hears his car door open and shut, but after a few long moments realizes she hasn’t heard the engine turn over. When she turns around, she sees him striding quickly around the back of her car and to the driver side, and she rolls down the window. Arya’s about to ask if he forgot something at her apartment, but he doesn’t give her a chance to ask.

 

“This is either going to be my best idea or worst idea,” he starts, and she knows that she’s in for a bit of a monologue. He crouches down and leans against the edge of the window on his folded arms. “But, aside from the pepper spray and your hand getting burned, I don’t want this to stop. I want continue eating dinner with you. I want to continue watching Jeopardy with you and learning what other obscure subjects you’re an expert in… and I don’t want to have to get assaulted in the parking lot again to make any of that happen.”

 

“So earlier when you said you’d probably date me you meant…?” Arya tries to steel herself, but a smile widens across her face as she’s talking. 

 

“I meant I’m not upset at how this evening turned out, not at all. Also… I’d like to cook dinner for you next Friday.”

 

“It’s a date.”

 

“Yea?”

 

“Yea,” Arya repeats back, then passes her phone over to him. “Put your info in.”

 

He takes her phone and makes a new contact, and then texts a message to himself before he leans in again to hand the phone back to her. Her fingers wrap around his wrist, holding him in place as she surges forward and brings her lips to the corner of his mouth. 

 

It’s quick, missing on purpose, and when she pulls back, Gendry looks positively gobsmacked. Arya smirks, pleased with herself. “Now go home and get some rest.” She runs her thumb back and forth across the pulse point on his wrist, then slides her hand down to take her phone. “You look like you’ve had quite the day,” Arya deadpans.

 

Gendry has been quiet, but laughs brightly at her humor, wishing her a goodnight through his laughter. He slaps the hood of her car as he walks past, lightly, just enough so she hears it. 

 

She looks up to see him shaking his head and a smile wide across his face as he leaves the parking lot. 

 

Plugging her phone in, she thumbs around until she finds Rush then cranks up the stereo. Arya thinks back to just a half hour ago,  _ I'm glad I maced you and not some other weirdo. _

  
“Ain’t that the truth,” she says aloud as she throws her car into gear.  _ Ain’t that the truth _ . 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by some silly thing on Facebook I saw, where two strangers met in a parking lot because they had the same car and someone got in the wrong car.
> 
> Beautiful Disaster title taken from the 311 song.


End file.
